Needed to be argued for before Fuentes thing. Anyone who supported the attempt to steal the 2020 election is under suspicion of fascism. And, his original backer Peter Thiel explicitly said he would choose capitalism over democracy. Sounds like fascism to me. Communists choose socialism over democracy. Not that hard to understand this stuff, if ya want to.
Agreed. When I reached the end (after agreeing with many things that were said, but also finding several points to be a bit forced, seemingly for the sake of a one-to-one correspondence with Siraganian's original piece) I was disappointed and felt, slightly, like I had wasted my time. I'm now inclined to rethink my initial (and perhaps too-quick) agreement with the points I took to be good, while I also see the revelation (confession?) at the end as confirming my judgment that the forced bits were forced.
Gabriel, thank you for this fine article that demolishes the Siraganian arguments against viewpoint diversity. I've read several other articles (glad you mention the Clune one from The Chronicle of Higher Ed), and I like yours best in its thorough taking apart of the Siraganian piece.
Of course, we're living in a time when "viewpoint diversity" and "open inquiry" and "heterodoxy" itself may be used by political actors on the Right, those most closely aligned with the Trump administration, for their own purposes. That isn't an argument at all that true viewpoint diversity and intellectual pluralism don't matter--because they do enormously, in libraries, and in other epistemic institutions. I do think acknowledging the politicization of these words by some and their being turned into catchphrases , is an ongoing feature of these debates. Chris Rufo comes to mind, as well as his "Manhattan Statement", which advocates for the coercion of higher ed institutions as evidenced by the recent Compact controversies.
Those on the progressive Left have obviously created monocultures in universities, in the way you refer to--and aren't open that much to viewpoint diversity in a way that would ensure healthy discourse and debate. But "viewpoint diversity" can become a weapon in the hands of those on the other side. This means that real intellectual pluralism within institutions needs to be a project that's elevated above partisan and activist agendas.
I agree, to some degree, that this debate shouldn't "touch" libraries since we're supposed to have our own foundational principles. I'm not sure that we can totally escape the controversies, especially academic libraries, when our parent institutions are very much caught up in them.
Thanks again for this thoughtful and probing commentary. Well done!
Seems to assume that Vance is not a fascist. Needs to be argued.
Written and in the post queue before this controversy about Nick Fuentes happened. Depending on what happens there a correction may be necessary.
Needed to be argued for before Fuentes thing. Anyone who supported the attempt to steal the 2020 election is under suspicion of fascism. And, his original backer Peter Thiel explicitly said he would choose capitalism over democracy. Sounds like fascism to me. Communists choose socialism over democracy. Not that hard to understand this stuff, if ya want to.
I would hope we would have more respect for one another than to use computers to generate “arguments ” instead of using our own brains.
Agreed. When I reached the end (after agreeing with many things that were said, but also finding several points to be a bit forced, seemingly for the sake of a one-to-one correspondence with Siraganian's original piece) I was disappointed and felt, slightly, like I had wasted my time. I'm now inclined to rethink my initial (and perhaps too-quick) agreement with the points I took to be good, while I also see the revelation (confession?) at the end as confirming my judgment that the forced bits were forced.
Gabriel, thank you for this fine article that demolishes the Siraganian arguments against viewpoint diversity. I've read several other articles (glad you mention the Clune one from The Chronicle of Higher Ed), and I like yours best in its thorough taking apart of the Siraganian piece.
Of course, we're living in a time when "viewpoint diversity" and "open inquiry" and "heterodoxy" itself may be used by political actors on the Right, those most closely aligned with the Trump administration, for their own purposes. That isn't an argument at all that true viewpoint diversity and intellectual pluralism don't matter--because they do enormously, in libraries, and in other epistemic institutions. I do think acknowledging the politicization of these words by some and their being turned into catchphrases , is an ongoing feature of these debates. Chris Rufo comes to mind, as well as his "Manhattan Statement", which advocates for the coercion of higher ed institutions as evidenced by the recent Compact controversies.
Those on the progressive Left have obviously created monocultures in universities, in the way you refer to--and aren't open that much to viewpoint diversity in a way that would ensure healthy discourse and debate. But "viewpoint diversity" can become a weapon in the hands of those on the other side. This means that real intellectual pluralism within institutions needs to be a project that's elevated above partisan and activist agendas.
I agree, to some degree, that this debate shouldn't "touch" libraries since we're supposed to have our own foundational principles. I'm not sure that we can totally escape the controversies, especially academic libraries, when our parent institutions are very much caught up in them.
Thanks again for this thoughtful and probing commentary. Well done!